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Press Freedom Defense Fund

Islamophobic Think Tank Helped Prosectors Write Terror Indictment Against ICE Protesters

The far-right Center for Security Policy, led by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, is best known for pedaling conspiracy theories.

A researcher at a far-right think tank helped Justice Department prosecutors craft their indictment for terror charges against an alleged “north Texas antifa cell,” the researcher testified Monday. The charges were brought in relation to a protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center outside Dallas.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy said under questioning from a defense attorney that he provided language that prosecutors used in the first-ever domestic terrorism case against a purported antifa cell.

The decision to use the language was the government’s, Shideler said.

“I told them what I believed to be an accurate definition of antifa, and they used it,” Shideler said.

The courtroom testimony provided a window into the extraordinarily close cooperation between federal prosecutors and a Washington advocacy group that has regularly argued for government action against left-wing activists.

Shideler himself was the author of a September article titled “How to Dismantle Far-Left Extremist Networks: A Roadmap for the Trump Administration” that called on the Justice Department to take more aggressive action against left-of-center activists. He said he conferred with prosecutors in October, a month before they obtained an indictment in the Texas case.

How Many Members Does Antifa Have? Where Is Its Headquarters? The FBI Has No Answers.

Defense lawyers raised questions about Shideler’s professional home, the Center for Security Policy. The nonprofit think tank was founded by Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official under President Ronald Reagan who has routinely been described as an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist. Gaffney’s views on Islam are commonly espoused at Center for Security Policy events.

The center itself has been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation Shideler bristled at in court.

“Yes sir, the Southern Poverty Law Center has mislabeled many people as a hate group,” he said in response to........

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